{"id":194564917,"date":"2026-05-29T19:41:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T23:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/?p=194564917"},"modified":"2026-05-29T19:41:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T23:41:30","slug":"new-music-from-paul-mccartney-and-the-question-nobody-wants-to-ask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/2026\/05\/29\/new-music-from-paul-mccartney-and-the-question-nobody-wants-to-ask\/","title":{"rendered":"New Music from Paul McCartney, and the Question Nobody Wants to Ask"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-gap-12 pc-paddingLeft-8 pc-paddingRight-8 pc-paddingTop-12 pc-paddingBottom-12 pc-alignItems-flex-end pc-reset\">\n<div class=\"line-DsYVXw active-Yh0Zwm\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p><strong>Paul McCartney<\/strong>\u00a0released his first studio work in nearly six years,\u00a0<em>The Boys of Dungeon Lane<\/em>, one of the most anticipated albums of the year from one of the most scrutinized artists in the history of popular music. &#x1f3b5;<\/p>\n<p>The early reviews have been warmly positive, if carefully qualified. Alexis Petridis of\u00a0<em>The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0awarded it four out of five stars, calling it \u201cwistful\u201d and \u201clovely\u201d and \u201cas McCartney-esque as it\u2019s possible to be.\u201d The Associated Press gave it three out of five stars, calling it \u201ca straightforward pop-rock disc\u2014pleasant in spots, inoffensive in others.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"youtube2-2n1IhyF6R0U\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;2n1IhyF6R0U&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/2n1IhyF6R0U?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>These new songs finding Paul in a candid, vulnerable, and deeply reflective mood, writing with rare openness about his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with\u00a0<strong>George Harrison<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>John Lennon<\/strong>\u00a0long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania. That\u2019s not press release boilerplate, it\u2019s a description of specific thematic territory that McCartney has circled for decades without quite landing in the middle of until now. The title itself comes from a lyric McCartney used in a 1991 demo called \u201cIn Liverpool\u201d that included the lines \u201cWalking with the boys of Dungeon Lane \/ Aimlessly towards the cast iron shore\u201d\u2014an image he carried for thirty-five years before it became the organizing principle of an entire album.<\/p>\n<p>Is this Paul\u2019s swan song? Hell no, the guy lives to write and perform. He won\u2019t quit until he\u2019s taken his last breath.<\/p>\n<p>The album was produced with Andrew Watt, whose collaboration with McCartney began five years ago over a cup of tea and an exchange of ideas. Playing around on the guitar during their first meeting, Paul happened upon a chord sequence he didn\u2019t recognize, which Watt suggested they record immediately. That session produced the album\u2019s opening track, \u201cAs You Lie There,\u201d and McCartney played the majority of instruments throughout\u2014much in the spirit of his 1970 solo debut.<\/p>\n<div id=\"youtube2-bLRV8hRRUHo\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;bLRV8hRRUHo&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/bLRV8hRRUHo?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">The Voice<\/h3>\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-alignItems-center pc-position-absolute pc-reset header-anchor-parent\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-contents pc-reset pubTheme-yiXxQA\">\n<div id=\"\u00a7the-voice\" class=\"pencraft pc-reset header-anchor offset-top\"><\/div>\n<p><button class=\"pencraft pc-reset pencraft iconButton-mq_Et5 iconButtonBase-dJGHgN buttonBase-GK1x3M buttonStyle-r7yGCK size_sm-G3LciD priority_secondary-S63h9o\" tabindex=\"0\" type=\"button\" aria-label=\"Link\" data-href=\"https:\/\/beatlesrewind.substack.com\/i\/199267511\/the-voice\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now for the question that hovers over every McCartney release and every McCartney concert, the one that fans discuss with varying degrees of discomfort and critics address with varying degrees of tact: what about the voice?<\/p>\n<p>The honest answer is that the reviews of \u201cDays We Left Behind\u201d are divided in ways that reflect a genuine underlying tension, not simply differing aesthetic preferences. One reviewer at\u00a0<em>The Musical Hype<\/em>\u00a0declared unambiguously that McCartney \u201cdoes not miss a beat\u201d and that \u201chis voice sounds amazing, 83 years in.\u201d That assessment appears to reflect what you hear when you\u2019re listening with love for the man and gratitude for his continued existence rather than with analytical precision.<\/p>\n<p>The more candid assessments come from the audiophile listener community. A review on\u00a0<em>Rate Your Music<\/em>\u00a0put it with uncomfortable specificity: the song is fine, and would have been one of the better tunes on\u00a0<em>Egypt Station<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<em>McCartney III<\/em>\u2014\u201dbut ugh. What is it with these elderly rock stars allowing their voices to be absolutely steamrolled to death by pitch correction?\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"youtube2-kxMUlqEDJm0\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;kxMUlqEDJm0&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/kxMUlqEDJm0?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>That critique cuts close to the real issue. The pitch correction is audible to trained ears, and it creates a specific uncanny quality\u2014a voice that is technically on pitch but lacks the natural imperfections that make a human voice feel human. McCartney has made no secret of this; he\u2019s openly admitted to utilizing pitch correction in the studio when he wants to quickly tweak a specific take he is otherwise happy with.<\/p>\n<p>How does McCartney\u2019s performances compare with other stars who\u2019ve continued well past their prime? Consider Tony Bennett, who died in 2023 at ninety-six. He recorded his final album\u00a0<em>Love for Sale<\/em>\u00a0with Lady Gaga in 2021 while living with Alzheimer\u2019s disease. His voice on those recordings was fragile, reduced, unmistakably aged\u2014and devastating in its beauty precisely because of that fragility. He leaned into the \u201cold man voice\u201d, and the result was among the most moving music of his late career. The rawness was the point.<\/p>\n<p>McCartney has made a different choice. He continues to perform \u201cMaybe I\u2019m Amazed\u201d in the original key with pitch correction assistance. He continues to hit the high notes of \u201cHey Jude\u201d at arena shows, with results that depend significantly on which night you attended. The \u201cGot Back\u201d tour\u2014which ran through 2025 and featured a fifty-song setlist spanning the Beatles, Wings, and solo material\u2014demonstrated McCartney\u2019s continued capacity to engage audiences for two-plus-hour sets despite his age, maintaining vocal stamina that just astonishes.<\/p>\n<p>Rod Stewart, his contemporary, has been more openly candid about working within his vocal limitations as he\u2019s aged. Bob Dylan abandoned any pretense of technical vocal quality decades ago and built an artistic identity around the character of his deteriorated voice. Johnny Cash made some of his most powerful music in the last years of his life precisely because he allowed the damage and the age to be audible. McCartney\u2019s instinct has been to fight the process rather than work with it, and the pitch correction on \u201cDays We Left Behind\u201d is the latest expression of that instinct.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">What Still Works<\/h3>\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-alignItems-center pc-position-absolute pc-reset header-anchor-parent\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-contents pc-reset pubTheme-yiXxQA\">\n<div id=\"\u00a7what-still-works\" class=\"pencraft pc-reset header-anchor offset-top\"><\/div>\n<p><button class=\"pencraft pc-reset pencraft iconButton-mq_Et5 iconButtonBase-dJGHgN buttonBase-GK1x3M buttonStyle-r7yGCK size_sm-G3LciD priority_secondary-S63h9o\" tabindex=\"0\" type=\"button\" aria-label=\"Link\" data-href=\"https:\/\/beatlesrewind.substack.com\/i\/199267511\/what-still-works\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>None of this diminishes what McCartney remains at eighty-three: the most productive and commercially successful older musician in popular culture, still writing original material, still performing two-hour shows, still generating genuine anticipation for a new album. He\u2019s not what he used to be, but he still brings more joy to more people than perhaps any other musician. He recently played two- and three-night stands at the Bowery Ballroom and the Fonda Theatre\u2014intimate venues of 575 and 1,200 capacity respectively, where there is nowhere to hide\u2014with demand that dwarfed supply in both cases. That is not the career trajectory of a legacy act coasting on nostalgia. That is an eighty-three-year-old man who loves performing, and who people genuinely want to hear.<\/p>\n<p>The songwriting, importantly, appears undiminished.\u00a0<em>The Boys of Dungeon Lane<\/em>\u00a0is musically eclectic, seeing Paul across an array of instruments and styles\u2014Wings-style rock, Beatles-style harmonies, McCartney-style grooves, understated intimacy, melody. The themes\u2014memory, aging, childhood, the passage of time\u2014are not the themes of a man grasping for relevance but of one finally willing to sit still with his own history and examine it honestly. That is arguably the most interesting creative development of his late career, more interesting than any individual note he may or may not hit cleanly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul McCartney\u00a0released his first studio work in nearly six years,\u00a0The Boys of Dungeon Lane, one of the most anticipated albums of the year from one of the most scrutinized artists in the history of popular music. &#x1f3b5; The early reviews have been warmly positive, if carefully qualified. Alexis Petridis of\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0awarded it four out of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"1","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"2","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"3","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"2","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"default","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[32,33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2x2Mt-dandP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194564917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194564917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194564917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194564918,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194564917\/revisions\/194564918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194564917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194564917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weberbooks.com\/kindle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194564917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}